The following relates generally to wireless communication and more specifically to license assisted request-to-send (RTS) and clear-to-send (CTS) transmission.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
Some wireless communications systems may operate using a one radio access technology (RAT) (e.g., to the LTE standard) and may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communications with multiple UEs. Another wireless communications multiple-access system may operate according to a different RAT (e.g., a system operating according to an IEEE 802.11 standard) that may include a number of base stations supporting communication with multiple stations in a shared frequency spectrum. The two systems may communicate in a shared or unlicensed RF spectrum band on the same or overlapping time or frequency resources.
Devices communicating in a shared or unlicensed radio frequency spectrum band may exchange signaling messages prior to transmitting or receiving data to indicate to other nearby devices that the shared or unlicensed medium is occupied. If, however, a nearby device does not detect the signal exchange, that nearby device may transmit messages that cause interference with other nearby transmissions.